I think one of the weirdest things about growing up is realizing that, for most of your life, someone has always told you what comes next. When you are a kid, you go from elementary school to middle school to high school. You finish one grade and move on to the next. Every year already has a structure in life waiting for you. You know when school starts, when it ends, what classes you are supposed to take, and what you are supposed to accomplish before you can move forward. Even in high school, when you start to feel independent, your life is still incredibly guided. You wake up at the same time, go to the same classes, have teachers reminding you about assignments, counselors making sure you complete your requirements, and adults constantly asking what colleges you are applying to. There was always a next step. Sophomore year led to junior year, junior year led to senior year, and senior year led to college. At the time, I never really thought about how comforting that was… I’ve always lived that life.
College was the first time where that structure started to loosen. Coming to UC Berkeley felt like being given much more control over what my life could look like. Nobody was forcing me to wake up for class. Nobody was checking whether I finished my homework. I could choose which classes I wanted to take, which organizations I wanted to join, what opportunities I wanted to pursue, and who I wanted to surround myself with. For the first time, it felt like I was actually building my own life. College felt much more open-ended than high school ever did. There were so many possible directions I could go in, and I had to learn how to make decisions without always knowing whether there were the “right” ones.
However, even college is still structured. There are semesters, deadlines, enrollment periods, midterms, finals, degree requirements, breaks, and academic advisors. There is still a clear goal at the end of everything: graduation. Even when I felt lost, I could still look at a calendar and know what came next. Fall semester, winter break, spring semester, summer, and then repeat. There was always another semester waiting for me. There was always another set of classes to take and another list of requirements to complete. I never really had to think about what it would feel like when that cycle finally stopped.
Now I do.
Graduation has always sounded exciting when it felt far away. It was the finish line I was working toward. It meant finally being done with papers, exams, group projects, discussion posts, and stressing about whether I could get into the classes I needed. It represented accomplishment. Although now that graduation is starting to feel real, I have realized that this goes beyond that. It is also the end of one of the last clearly structured stages of my life. For the first time, there is no automatic next step waiting for me. That instills a sense of fear in me.
There is no “next grade.” There is no semester I automatically enroll in after graduation. There is no advisor sending me a checklist telling me exactly what I still need to complete. I just graduate, and then I am suddenly expected to enter the real world and figure things out. Hopefully, there is guidance there too. I know there will be coworkers, supervisors, mentors, family members, friends, and people who have already gone through the things I am about to experience. I know I will not suddenly be completely alone; however, the thought of reaching a point where guidance is no longer guaranteed genuinely scares me.
What happens when I have to make a decision and nobody can tell me the correct answer? What if I choose the wrong job? What if I move somewhere and hate it? What if I start a career and realize years later that it was never what I wanted? What if everyone around me seems like they know exactly what they are doing while I am still trying to figure it out? There is no syllabus for adulthood. There is no rubric telling you what an “A” looks like. There is no professor explaining how many points each decision is worth. At some point, the answer is just going to be mine to figure out.
That idea scares me, but Berkeley has also shown me that I am probably more independent than I give myself credit for. I have grown so much here without even realizing it was happening. There was never one dramatic moment where I suddenly became independent. It happened through little things. I learned how to manage my own schedule, go places by myself, make decisions without immediately asking someone else what I should do, meet new people, take opportunities without knowing exactly where they would lead, and recover when something did not go the way I wanted. I learned that sometimes you make the wrong choice and life keeps going. Sometimes you feel completely lost and still somehow figure things out.
There are so many things I do now without thinking that a younger version of me would have been terrified to do. I have become more comfortable putting myself into unfamiliar situations. I have learned how to ask for help when I need it while also trusting myself enough to handle things on my own. Berkeley has forced me to grow independently, and I am genuinely proud of that. Still, being more independent does not mean I am not scared about what happens next.
I think one of the things I am going to miss the most is how easy friendships feel in college. Believe it or not, I struggled with making friends in the past. Now, I am at the peak of that skill. Right now, I can text one of my friends at night asking what they are doing and somehow end up seeing them twenty minutes later. We can randomly get food, go on a walk, sit somewhere talking for hours, or decide to do something with almost no planning at all. Sometimes I see the same people multiple days in a row without even thinking about it. Everyone feels close. There is always somebody around, and that kind of closeness has become so normal to me that I sometimes forget it will not always look like this. One day, I will open that FindMy app and see all the contact icons spread out around the world.
After graduation, everything is going to change, one thing I’ve always hated. Someone might move to Los Angeles. Someone else might move across the country. Someone might start graduate school. Someone might move back home. Somebody will have a job that starts early in the morning, and somebody else will have a schedule that makes it almost impossible to see them. Suddenly, “what are you doing tonight?” becomes “are you free sometime next month?” Seeing your friends stop being spontaneous and start requiring calendars, travel plans, and actual effort.
That makes me sad. Honestly, the tears are coming down as I’m writing this.
Not because I think those friendships will disappear, but because I know they will change. I know that is a part of life, but sometimes I wish I could freeze everything exactly where it is. I want random nights. I want the pointless conversations on top of Doe Library at 2am that somehow turn into memories I will probably remember years from now. I want late-night food runs and spontaneous plans. I want to know that the people I care about are still somewhere nearby. I want to be able to say “come over” without somebody needing to book a flight first.
I am also scared of the point where everyone’s lives start moving in completely different directions. Right now, most of us are still in roughly the same stages. We are students. Some people have jobs, some have internships, some know exactly what they want to do after graduation, and some are still trying to figure everything out. There are differences, but there is still something connecting all of us. Eventually, that shared stage disappears.
One friend gets their dream job. Another gets engaged. Somebody gets married. Somebody buys a house. Somebody announces that they are expecting a child. Somebody seems like they have their entire career figured out. And maybe I will be completely happy with where I am when those things happen. I hope I will be. However, I also know how easy it is to compare yourself to the people around you and suddenly feel like you are behind.
I think that is one of the parts of adulthood that scares me the most. There is no universal timeline, but sometimes it feels like there is. There is no official age where you are supposed to be married. There is no deadline for buying a house. There is no age where you are supposed to have your career completely figured out. There is no rule saying you need to have children by a certain point or reach a particular salary before you can call yourself successful. Regardless, I know there will probably be moments when someone else reaches a milestone and I start wondering whether I am supposed to be there too.
What if I am still figuring out my career while someone else is already established in theirs? What if one of my friends gets married and I suddenly wonder if I am “behind”? What if somebody is building a family while I am still unsure what I want my life to look like? I do not want someone else’s happiness to become evidence that I am doing something wrong. Though, I know comparison can work like that sometimes.
School trains us to measure progress very clearly. You finish a grade, you complete a requirement, you earn units, you graduate. Progress is visible. Adulthood, however, does not seem to work that way. Sometimes progress might look like leaving a job that makes you miserable. Sometimes it might mean moving back home. Sometimes it means realizing you changed your mind about something you thought you wanted forever. Sometimes it means starting over. Sometimes you might be doing exactly what is right for you and still feel like you are behind because someone else’s life looks more complete from the outside.
I think I am going to have to learn how to be okay with that.
It is funny because most of my life, I wanted more freedom. I wanted more independence. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to choose where I went, who I spent time with, what I studied, and what I did with my life. It’s one of the reasons why I chose UC Berkeley. Now I am slowly getting exactly what I wanted, and part of me wishes someone would hand me another checklist telling me what comes next.
Maybe growing up is realizing that freedom and uncertainty come together… and the friends you make along the way. You cannot have complete independence without also accepting that sometimes nobody is going to know the answer for you. You cannot build your own life without eventually having to decide what that life should look like.
And maybe that is what Berkeley has actually prepared me for – showing me that I can survive without a perfect plan for life after graduation.
I have already walked into situations without knowing what would happen. I have already made decisions I was scared to make. I have met people because I randomly said yes to something. I have taken opportunities without knowing where they would lead. I have failed, changed my mind, started over, and kept moving. There were so many moments throughout college where I did not know exactly what I was doing, and somehow I still ended up becoming a person I am proud of.
So maybe I do not need as much guidance as I think I do.
That does not mean I am suddenly excited to leave everything behind. I am still scared of graduation. I am scared of leaving Berkeley and realizing that this version of my life is officially over. I am scared of missing my friends and wishing I could go back to a random Tuesday night when everyone was still nearby. I am scared of adulthood feeling lonely sometimes. I am scared of watching everyone move into different stages of life. I am scared of making the wrong decisions and realizing there is nobody who can tell me exactly what I am supposed to do.
Maybe… just maybe… growing up is not reaching a point where those disappear.
Maybe… just maybe… it is becoming someone you trust enough to move forward even when they are still there.
I do not know exactly what my life is going to look like after Berkeley. I do not know where my friends will end up, what career I will have, when I will reach certain milestones, or when I will finally feel like I have adulthood figured out. Maybe I never completely will.
What I do know is that I am growing up, and that is scary.
But maybe… just maybe… being scared does not mean I am unprepared. Maybe… just maybe… it just means I am standing at the beginning of a part of my life that nobody can fully map out for me. And maybe… just maybe… for the first time, I am becoming okay with being the person to draw the map.